Writer Gbolahan Obiesan: Yoruba is a bit like hip hop – it has many facets

Feast offers an explanation of Yoruba in a theatrical setting (Picture: File)

British writer Gbolahan Obiesan and director Rufus Norris tell Metro about Feast, their collaborative exploration of the West African belief system Yoruba.

‘It’s a bit like hip hop,’ says Gbolahan Obisesan. The British playwright is describing Yoruba, the West African belief system that can be found across the world, carried on the winds of migration and the slave trade. It’s always been part of Obisesan’s life, though he left Nigeria aged nine.

‘It has many facets: dance, song, the drum,’ he says. ‘It has its main principles about what you can do and how you align yourself to different camps and the knowledge of self that comes with devotion.’

If Yoruba is far less well-known here than other religions, Feast aims to change that. Obisesan is one of five writers who, under the aegis of director Rufus Norris and the Royal Court’s Elyse Dodgson, have contributed to a theatrical exploration of Yoruba, which moves from 1700s Nigeria to 2012 London. Stories by playwrights from Brazil, Cuba, the US, Nigeria and Britain have been woven into a pulsing carnival of dance and music, illustrating the extraordinary, fecund history of the Yoruba diaspora.

‘It would be impossible for one writer to accurately write into all these different worlds,’ says Norris, who grew up in Nigeria. ‘And British writers tend to write in a particularly British way. We felt that Feast had to come from the Yoruban tradition. The fact this culture has survived is because so much of it can’t be discussed.’

He warms to his theme. ‘So much of it is in the drum – the batá or the dundun. The tonal Yoruba language, which depends on pitch and inflection as much as vowels and consonants, can be closely copied with a dundun. Tonal languages are like a 3D version of flat Western tongues.’

Feast, then, is a celebration of rhythm and sound as much as storytelling – although the latter is crucial too. As Greek mythology has its gods, so Yoruba has its orishas. As Feast moves across centuries, so Oshun, Oya and Yemoya reappear. The maternal Yemoya crops up as a slave woman in 19th-century Brazil and a wise prostitute in Castro-era Cuba. Oya (a warrior spirit) appears as a radicalised student in Civil Rights-era America and a British Olympic athlete.

For all involved, the revelation has been the similarities across continents, meaning the strands merge into a narrative of resilience that testifies to Yoruba’s enduring prosperity.

‘We think of Cuba as a communist country but it’s also one with a shrine on every corner,’ says Norris. ‘Even Castro is said to practise santería [Cuba’s syncretic mix of Catholicism and Yoruba].’

Not that Yoruba culture, which in many places is bound up in the history of slavery, has always had a warm welcome.

‘It got crushed in the US because they banned Nigerian slaves from drumming, which is partly why Afro-Caribbean and African-American vocal skills became so strong,’ says Norris. ‘There’s this idea in the US that black American history began the day they banned slavery. It’s a long way from the truth.’

Obisesan, meanwhile, wanted to use Yoruba mythology to tell a story about modern Britain.

‘I wanted to use the orishas to explore ideas and conflicts that are often brushed beneath the surface,’ he says. ‘These characters represent archetypes and mindsets within the black community. There’s a sense here that

Yoruba is somewhat occult; taboo. But hopefully Feast will entertain people as well as inform and provoke them. It’s about doing as Oya does: asserting yourself but also accepting the idea that you need to investigate something before dismissing it.’

Feast previews from tomorrow, opens Feb 1 at the Young Vic Theatre. www.youngvic.org